Nue Kakure Sanaka no Konoha
by Sumire Kaika
Summary: A tiny story with Nue and Byakuren.


~Nue Kakure Sanaka no Konoha~

「The Nue Hidden Amidst the Leaves」

'Nue?'

Staring at the leafy heap of mess surrounding the courtyard and the grassy path leading west, I sighed.

'Nue, come out.'

I headed through the bushes heading outwards away from the temple. The sneaky Nue was pulling my leg for yet another time, and I was without a clue on how to pull hers.

'Nue~?'

The clear blue sky was watching overhead, scarcely dotted with clouds and avians. Plants were heard rustling as I rushed through, including ambient sounds produced by myself or neighbouring youkai among the flowering flora.

I darted around the nearby wilderness of Myouren Temple, searching almost frantically for the mysterious creature whom I recently became acquainted with. I could hear a distant, playful cackling coming from somewhere in the wilderness I prowled through, and that only agitated me.

'Nue?! Where are you going?'

I left the small wilderness eventually, reaching the western walls of the temple. Half-creeping round the structure, I kept an acute watch on the surroundings. Followers wandered, not taking note of the magician with the hair of a gradient shade suspiciously stalking an invisible enemy - that magician being myself.

As Hijiri Byakuren, possessing direct ancestry to Hijiri Myouren whom the temple is named after, I found it in my responsibilities - not necessarily others' - to handle the temple visitors to the furthest my ability could allow. That meant appearing to be an unaware, fruitlessly cautious feline crawling along the concrete with no expected outcome at heart.

Stumbling past civilians and getting nowhere, I rounded the whole temple back to the courtyard. Grasping my knees, I panted quietly, breathing in small and short quantities before I took to straightening up.

At the steps, Houjuu sat patiently. Her elbows were stood up on her knees, and aside from her glum appearance there was her trident which lay beside her. My shoulders sagging, I sighed. The yamabiko, Kasodani Kyouko, sweeped her broom nearby without a look of interest to either presence.

'Kyouko, Nue's...'

No, I had to approach her myself. Gritting my teeth, I strode over to where Nue sat. She looked distant and bored.

'Nue?'

Nue, hesitant, tilted her head towards me. Her expression didn't change even slightly.

'Bya-chan?' she asked, voice much less indifferent than her face.

'Mmhmm, it's me. Did you get bored, Nue?'

'I don't think so… no.'

I dropped down to sit next to her, making small distance from the trident.

'It's a nice spring.'

Nue nodded. 'That's why it's fun to play around at this time.'

I smiled. Nue found enjoyment commonplace in her life on Gensokyo - malicious or not malicious entertainment. No argument of mine was about to break the spell of Nue in the middle of wreaking havoc. Indeed, there was more to Nue than inflicting malice on as many people she could find nearby, and as the nun of the temple, I wasn't the kind of person to simply go and ask her personal enquiries that particularly mattered more to her than me.

'Nue, what would you like to do today?'

Nue took the red trident into her hands and gently touched the middle tip of the fork.

'N-Nothing violent, Nue.'

Replacing the trident on the steps, she groaned.

'Yes, Bya-chan. I got bored.'

Raising my head towards the sky, I thought a little.

'Mmm, why don't we...'

'Huh?' Nue tilted her head.

'Why don't we go meet some people?'

Nue paused for a second, and flashed a grin.

'Nue!' I shook my head. 'Of course, they're humans, and they do live nearby. We can have dinner there, but undoubtedly not dinner made of humans.'

Nue grumbled to herself, and stood up.

'Let's do that.'

'Nue… I know it's not too exciting, but - didn't you want to make friends in the first place?'

Nue brooded quietly during the walk after that.

Streaming through the leaves, the sun peered at us from above. The leaves below my sandals crunched and crunched but under Nue's feet they didn't. Wondering why, I looked to my side to see Nue floating as I took my steps. Smiling again, relieved she was still following, I approached the human village in time to discover the settlement still active and bubbling.

The sun lingered high up into the air with a blazing heat unnatural for spring, and yet the human civilisation failed to notice. I, on one hand, hadn't noticed the heat was so strong until I wrapped my mind round the ideation and paused.

'Bya-chaaaan?' Nue groaned, tugging my sleeve. 'What's taking you so long?'

Fixing my posture immediately, I blinked.

'Um, it's nothing.'

At a distant side of Gensokyo, where the sun would be an omnipotent orb of combustion, the red-white shrine maiden was probably at conflict with another weather incident. That's what I liked to think to myself at times like these.

Nue floated by me with a sense of apathy. In mid-air, she fiddled with her trident and hummed a playful tune. It sounded reminiscent of something somewhere obscured in the back of my head.

'What's that song you're humming?' I asked.

'-Oh, that? With the high-pitched notes and the sense of terror behind it?'

I flushed at her description. 'Yeah, that.'

'It's a song I made. Or a song someone else made; I don't remember. I tend to hum it without thinking when I'm fighting off hordes of youkai and humans...'

I shuddered, looking at her directly. 'W-W-Wait, humans?!'

Nue grinned menacingly.

'So, you promised me...'

I looked up from the merchandise of a store I stumbled across.

'Huh?'

'You promised me you'd get me friends. Don't you remember?'

'Ah,' I began. 'I didn't exactly promise to get you friends, but...' I lowered my gaze and slid into deep thought. 'All right.'

'You promise me that, too?'

'That I'll get you friends?' I straightened my back and looked at her cheerfully in the eyes. 'Sure.'

We spent a while looking around. Nue greeted people, fighting back the urge to see them as lifeless corpses. Aah - but I must say, I do apologise in regard to the realistic attempts I make throughout my descriptions to peer into the trident-wielding girl's mind. It's futile, so to speak.

I contemplated on the possibility that she was going to fail at making a friend who she would be capable of trusting and capable of being trusted by. As it primarily popped into my mind, the next thing noticeable that I saw of Nue was a girl standing just by her, chatting away.

'Woah, Houjuu...' I muttered, eyes slightly more open than usual. 'Charismatic.'

The location being the human village, I figured the girl Nue was talking to was a human alike my former self. However, as I paid more attention and glanced closer, I saw that it was someone who I recognised. A girl among the trio that invaded the holy Palanquin Ship! What a dolt I felt like! With those bright green eyes and the respectively green hair, I noted her to be the last of the three that came to fend off the youkai. Like the red-white: a shrine maiden.

'It's been a little while, Kochiya-sa-'

'And that towering man-made robot? Sugei~!'

A sweatdrop flickered on the side of my forehead. The Moriya descendant glanced at me before the mood changed - or dropped - completely.

'A-Aah, _sumimasen ! ! !'_

It took a while for me to register that the shop we slightly occupied had emptied. Everyone had fled in fright. Apparently the Moriya blood wore on Kochiya from inside.

'I'm really sorry, shopkeeper-san...' Kochiya mourned. 'A-And to you, Hijiri-san. I was depressed in an instant when I saw you standing there, listening to our entire conversation...'

I tilted my head wearily. 'Entire… conversation?' All I could recall was the robot…!

'Y-Yes! Nue-chan didn't want anyone else to know but her _friends_...' I gulped. Nue was really that displeased about me, wasn't she…? 'She didn't want anyone else to know that what was happening to her _inside of the Myouren Temple ! ! !'_ Oh, for crying out loud…

As I listened to Kochiya, I came to realise what amazement it was that Houjuu wasn't causing the trouble for me at this point.

When the shrine maiden quietened down, I started, 'But, I didn't-'

'Anyway, I'm really sorry, _Hijiri-san, Nue-chan ! ! !'_ She rushed out of the store with a glint of tears in her eyes. I supposed what they were previously discussing - of course, not including the otaku interjections - was something deafeningly serious…

We headed back to the Temple quietly. On the path back, I indulged myself in the clear sky's beauty. However, the sky I saw wasn't clear at all. Mutually, Nue noticed it as well.

'Over there.' Her finger outstretched towards a wooden bench with a shelter of leaves. I guessed that the dewdrops wouldn't do as much harm as the rain itself would.

_Pitter patter pitter patter._

The continuous loop of the ever-falling sky droplets.

_Pitter patter pitter pa-_

'I don't blame you for what happened back there.'

'...?'

Nue turned her head towards me.

'I told her a lot. It would have been normal for you to have been hearing so much about me… About my history...' I frowned curiously as she spoke. 'I… never told you anything, did I? About myself?' I shook my head. 'Then; it must have been a revelation.'

_One that I wasn't perfectly aware of, that was for sure._

From then on, Nue stuck around longer, and her malicious bouts had lessened abruptly. She started to treat me as a friend… something she hadn't already been doing. We hugged more often; I patted her on the head adoringly more often; we played around at a calmer pace… it felt as though she released something from herself.

Something I hadn't been around to confirm the tangible existence of.


End file.
